


La Mort de l'Espoir

by phenomenology



Category: Star Wars: Rebels
Genre: Angst, F/M, Family Feels, Lots of Angst, Space family, in which everything goes to shit, trust me it's brutal
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-22
Updated: 2016-12-22
Packaged: 2018-09-11 04:24:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,021
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8953582
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/phenomenology/pseuds/phenomenology
Summary: It was only supposed to be a routine operation. They had gone over the plan almost fifteen times before they had even made the jump to hyperspace. But naturally, Kanan’s plan fell apart.





	

**Author's Note:**

> So I started writing this like a year and a half ago as payback for some angst one of my friends threw at me right before season two started...and I'm just now finishing it. Anyway...I'm horrible to the space family and I don't know why.

It was only supposed to be a routine operation.

They had gone over the plan almost fifteen times before they had even made the jump to hyperspace. But naturally, Kanan’s plan fell apart. Hera always turned the blame back to him somehow. She would flick his chin with her finger and throw him that teasing look, a grin plastered across her face.

However, she wasn’t doing that now.

“Hera!” Kanan cried, his voice hoarse, tearing uncomfortably at his vocal chords on it’s way out. He turned back towards the ship, finally catching on as to why their entrance to the Star Destroyer had been so easy. The crew hadn’t been in the hanger long, just enough time to clear the _Ghost’s_ ramp and start off towards their assigned positions. Of course, it had taken only seconds longer for the explosion to rip apart the hanger, and the ship, behind them.

The blast threw Kanan back, the heat searing his cheeks and even singeing the front of his shirt. His head smacked into something solid, leaving his ears ringing and his vision spinning wildly. Attempting to sit up, Kanan turned around, finding the rest of the crew scattered around the hanger in varying states of consciousness.

Zeb had managed to stay conscious, stumbling to his feet as he shoved aside debris and looked around in horror. Sabine was a few feet from where Ezra was, although the two youngest members of the crew had been thrown nearly all the way across the hanger. While Sabine struggled to sit up, obviously fighting to stay awake, Ezra was flat on the ground, unmoving.

Whirling to look where the _Ghost_ had been parked, Kanan found nothing but a smoking pile of half melted Durasteel and other charred items that had been aboard their ship.

_Hera’s ship._

“Hera!” Kanan cried out again, desperation lacing his voice as he weakly hauled himself over a large pile of debris. His eyes swept over the ruins of their home, his heart hammering in his chest. Kanan struggled to draw a proper breath, his chest feeling too tight, and his heart pumping too fast. All that Kanan knew was that he _had_ to find Hera.

Kanan knew that he should be prioritizing the others, the one’s he could actually see at the moment, especially since Ezra was out cold. But something inside of Kanan’s very soul was driving him to find Hera, to know that she was still alive, that she was okay. But even as Kanan dug sporadically through the steaming metal piles, he could sense her Force signature slipping away. She didn’t have long and Kanan didn’t know if he would find her in time.

Crying out again, Kanan felt as if he were unleashing a small amount of his burden into the artificial atmosphere in the slightly ruined hanger bay.

“Hera! Hera, please! Answer me!”

Suddenly Kanan stopped in his tracks, turning sharply to one side to stare at a pile of debris sitting nearby. Rushing over, Kanan began to toss aside the scraps, his fingers catching on bits and pieces of the sharp edges that had been created by the explosion. He hardly noticed the pain, the blood blossoming up from the little cuts all over his hands from digging. The former Jedi knew that Hera was underneath this pile of wreckage, he just had to find her.

He had to.

“Hang on Hera,” Kanan muttered to himself as he shoved aside a particularly large piece of the ship. “I’m right here, I’ve almost got you. Just hang on for me, okay?”

He was getting closer, he knew he was, and he tried to work faster. The adrenaline rush pumping through Kanan had begun at the moment of the inferno’s eruption. It was now continuing to be fueled by his desire to find Hera and make sure she was okay. There was no way that Kanan was going to leave Hera alone underneath a smoking pile of what used to be her greatest asset, practically an extension of herself.

Digging his hands into the pile, grabbing firmly onto the largest piece of debris, Kanan suddenly felt it. It was like half of his very being had been sucked out of his body, ripped away by a power so out of reach that all Kanan could do was helplessly sit by and stare at the piece of metal in his hand.

Kanan, who grew up thinking that he could be one of the most powerful beings in the universe, the power of the living Force at his fingertips and an entire Order at his side, could do nothing as he felt his other half, slip away.

His voice ripped violently at his throat, tearing at the fine sinews of his vocal chords and filling the ruined space with such raw emotion and pain that Zeb and the half-conscious Sabine on the opposite side of the hanger flinched in shock. Kanan cried out for Hera, throwing the debris aside with a strength he did not know he possessed.

Soon, Kanan was simply staring down at a limp shell, lying haplessly among the wreckage of her once proud ship. The green hue of her skin was fading, steadily being replaced with a dull, and ashy gray. Everything that Hera had been, all of her prowess and radiating being, had slipped away with her moments ago. Her body had been a shell, a case, a simple jar in which she had resided. And now, without her spirit possessing it, Hera’s body looked small, fragile, and not at all like the powerful woman Kanan had known her to be.

Scooping up the Twi’lek in his arms, Kanan carefully lifted Hera’s body out of the pile, cradling her close and holding her head steady at the base of her neck. Kanan knew there was nothing he could do for her now, but upon inspection, he realized that he never would have been able to do anything. The explosion had badly burned her beautiful skin, the falling debris crushing several of her limbs and dislocating bones that should never have the right to do so.

Kanan, clutching Hera’s body close, vaguely realized that his crew now had neither a ship, nor a captain. And to add on to their loses, Kanan remembered that Chopper had been inside the ship as well. The poor astromech had probably been among the debris that Kanan had been throwing aside.

Burying his face in the crook of Hera’s cold, lifeless neck, Kanan tried avidly to remember what Hera’s skin had felt like under his touch when she had been alive. Her skin had been vibrantly green, pulsing with life and beauty. She had held herself with confidence and strength, her eyes reflecting every bit of that power she seemed to possess.

Hera was gone now, though, and her lifeless corpse was all that remained, hanging limply in Kanan’s weak embrace.

“Kanan!” Zeb’s gruff voice cut through the haze of despair that was shrouding the man’s mind. The darkness tugged at him, urging him to give in, to let go of all the emotion he had been taught to restrain, lest it control him. There was nothing to hold him back anymore now that Hera was gone.

“Kanan!” Zeb called again from across the field of debris, desperation thick in the Lasat’s voice. Turning his head towards the call, the Jedi felt his heart plummet towards his gut. Zeb was holding Ezra in his arms, the boy laying like a rag doll in the larger man’s hold. Sabine was leaning heavily against a large piece of debris, barely holding herself up as she visibly fought to keep her eyes open.

“I don’t know if Ezra’s okay! He won’t open his eyes! How’s Hera? Did you find her?” The Lasat’s rough voice was laced with fear; Kanan could plainly hear it as he gently set Hera down. It had been less than a minute since they had boarded the Destroyer and Kanan had already lost his home, his love and their droid. And now he could feel Ezra slipping away as well.

“Not again,” Kanan whispered through clenched teeth, fingers curling into fists as a tremor wracked through his body. “I can’t lose everyone again,” Kanan said aloud to no one.

The man’s vision blurred, the edges tinted red with rage as he stood and moved swiftly towards the rest of his crew. Dropping in front of them, Kanan reached out to Ezra, placing a hand on his apprentice’s shoulder.

Hearing Zeb inhale sharply, Ezra was suddenly moved away from Kanan’s reach. Zeb was staring at Kanan with large, round eyes as the Lasat moved to stand in front of Sabine, almost as if he were blocking her from Kanan.

“Mate,” Zeb whispered hoarsely. “What’s wrong with your eyes? They’re…yellow.”

Kanan physically felt his heart stop beating for a moment. He had given in, had fallen to the Dark Side of the Force. Kanan-no, _Caleb_ , had failed to hold his emotions in check. The rage, the pain, the overwhelming need for revenge for what Kanan and Caleb had lost finally overtook the former Jedi.

He had lost control, and was willing to cut down anything that stood in his way. There was no immediate escape from the Destroyer with their ship and captain gone. So the only way he saw fit to stay safe was to kill every Imperial aboard and take the ship for his crew.

Setting to work, Kanan left the remaining members of his crew in that smoking hanger bay, determination setting his stride even. As he whirled, lightsaber slicing cleanly through troopers, he felt the moment Ezra passed, accentuating the swell of grief with a cry as he drove his red tinted saber through an Imperial official, successfully taking the ship for his own purposes. 

Sabine and Zeb were the only ones left now, and they both thought he was a monster. Zeb would probably keep Sabine far from Kanan, and she was barely hanging on from what Kanan had seen of her. 

They – no, _he_ – had failed. Kanan had failed to sense the danger, to protect the people he claimed to love more than anyone else in the whole galaxy. On top of that, Kanan hated himself furiously for giving into the Dark Side after all the years he had kept it at bay. He wanted to plow the Star Destroyer now under his command into the one adjacent to them, but the part of him that still clung to sanity reminded Kanan that Sabine and Zeb did not deserve that fate.

However, moments later, Kanan watched a small shuttle fleeing from one of the hanger bays near the bow of the ship, and he knew that he was the only one left on board. So taking a deep, steadying breath, Kanan punched in autopilot directions, setting them on a collision course with the other Destroyer, and ignored the warning flashing on the screens, desperately trying to get Kanan’s attention. He glared emotionlessly down at the panels smeared with the blood from his ruined fingers, watching for a moment to make sure the course would not automatically change its destination.

Feeling the ship turn and bow with the forced direction, Kanan quickly made his way back to the blown hanger, barely registering the walk there. The sirens blaring throughout the ships corridors and bays let Kanan know that they were still plowing on towards the unaware Destroyer.

Once back in the hanger, Kanan gathered his apprentice’s small, broken body into his arms and carried him over to where he had left Hera’s body. Placing them side-by-side, Kanan left a soft kiss on each of their brows, daring to reach out to the light side of the Force and beg for family to be safe in their travels after life.

There was a quick, stunning jolt as the Destroyers collided with one another, and Kanan had enough time to hope he would at least get to see Hera and Ezra’s faces one last time before the two ships were engulfed in explosions and flames.


End file.
